One day in office, remote work for rest of the week for Meesho employees

E-commerce firm's Flexi-Office model offers employees financial support for relocating

Meesho, the SoftBank-backed e-commerce firm, will from June 1 next year start a model letting employees to attend office for a day and continue working remotely for the rest of the week.  The firm is ending its work-from-anywhere model.

Meesho has a total of 1,850 employees and 50 per cent of them are based in Bengaluru. The rest of the staff is spread across the country. Now, they would have to either relocate to Bengaluru or travel to the city once a week.

Employees relocating to Bengaluru will get comprehensive financial support, according to the Flexi-Office model. This will cover travel, real estate brokerage, goods transportation, school readmission and sponsored daycare facilities for children younger than six. The company will give relocation leave and other assistance.

“This move is rooted in our culture of proactively soliciting and acting upon employee feedback,” said Ashish Kumar Singh, Chief Human Resources Officer at Meesho, in a company blog post.

“Our internal surveys reflect that while a boundary-less set-up has shown advantages like higher productivity, employees almost unanimously agree that we can further enhance team bonding and collaboration (especially for new joiners), quicker brainstorming and speed of execution,” said Singh.

Flexi-Office is a combination of once-a-week in-office presence and largely remote work. It has been crafted to deliver flexibility for employees while helping them bond and collaborate better, said Meesho.

In a recent survey, a majority of the employees expressed the need for more in-person connections for collaboration and bonding. Meesho said based on the survey’s results it is adopting the Flexi-Office model combining the flexibility and convenience of remote work.

Early this year, over 800 WhiteHat Jr employees resigned from the Byju’s-owned edtech start-up in the last two months after being asked to work from office. Mumbai-based WhiteHat Jr, which was acquired by edtech giant Byju’s for $300 million in 2020, had asked all its employees to work from the office within a month’s time.